Probably Not
by Miss Jemand
Summary: This is all original characters. A sketch, basically, a scene that happens to the main chara, Damian, a 28-year-old man who works in creature regulation and dragon caretaking... in one of his trips to Russia. If you're interested in it, you can find all his stuff mostly comics by typing Shamaneileen in deviantArt!


"You have to give up on this…"

Was he really listening to those words again? He would have liked them to be part of his imagination, to be caused by the mixture of the anesthetics and the terrible headache… maybe if he didn't answer, the words would go away… she would go away… maybe she wasn't even there.

"Damian, are you listening to me? You have to give up on this" No, it wasn't his imagination, those words were there, slapping him again as though someone had emptied a bucket full of cold water down his spine.

"Adele…" He sighed, looking down at his hands. His left wrist was bandaged, but he could see some bloodstains under the white, thick fabric. The pain hadn't gone away, but now it was just a fuzzy feeling, something he was able to ignore. "I am not going to quit. You know me."

"But you scared us to death! You should have seen mum!" His sister raised her voice at the same time she stood up, right before she realized she was in a hospital and lowered her tone again. "This is going to kill you, Dam; you have been lucky you aren't pushing daisies after this."

"Adele, you know where this is going. We've had the same conversation before" Yes, they had. And it had been painful, as usual… but his health condition hadn't been as bad as this time. He had actually been scared this time… even though he could barely remember what had happened. Blurry images in his mind, the huge beast scared because someone had let out another dragon when it was not the right time… and the pain, and the stinging fear, the nasty smell of…

"Poison, Damian. You're not happy with dealing with huge, awful beasts, that you gotta babysit dragons with poison in their claws." She was rumbling again, walking here and there, and gesturing with her hands, as she always did when she was nervous and wanted to distract herself from bursting into tears. She was proud; just like him. But he always won that battle.

"I'm a grown up man. I can choose what I want to do, what my destiny will be."

"Six feet under the earth, Damian! That's what it'll be!" She spat, her tears rolling down her cheeks. Finally, she was crying. That meant she'd let everything out, then she'd hug him again, and force him to promise to take more care of himself… until he ended up in hospital again. No matter where, China or Hungary, she'd always take a plane to see him and the same story would repeat again. It was always the same…

…or that's what he thought until she spoke again.

"No wonder why you're still alone; who would risk being next to a man that could die anytime?" She said suddenly, breaking the usual pattern, to Damian's surprise. That had hurt. Too much than expected, because it wasn't in the schedule… and because it was true.

"Ad…"

"No, Damian, listen to me."

"No!" He interrupted her back, raising his voice higher than usual and tensing his muscles till the point a twinge of pain pierced his left arm and hip. Dammit, he had forgotten about that scar as well… but the pain wouldn't make him shut up. "No, no, no! Stop it! It is always the same! You _must_ understand this is who I am. What do you want me to do? Dress in a suit and go to work to dad's orange juice factory? Why don't you cut my hair and shave me before locking me in an office for the rest of my life? That _would_ more likely kill me, Adele. Please."

Her sister's face mirrored his own anger for a few seconds and then the mask wore off and he was able to see all her grief. She understood. She understood that it was his way to be; it couldn't be other way. Even his own mother had helped him getting into that kind of world, knowing what it would take… but his sister had always been reluctant. She narrowed her eyes, causing some more tears to go down. She rubbed her eyes and her nose, quickly, and looked around: the racket had brought a few nurses to see what was going on. Without saying a word, she grabbed her purse and walked out of the room.

Damian flopped on the mattress with an impotence sigh; he would have wanted to get up and run after her. But it was no use; he was weak, with several serious injuries in the left side of his hips, and his left wrist had been almost torn apart. He had bled till the point he had feared he wasn't going to make it… but there he was. Alive, as usual. And tired… he curled himself into a ball on the side he had no injuries, and closed his eyes, hoping he would run away from his problems if he slept a whole day… maybe two, or three, or the needed days for his injuries to be healed. He hated being locked down there…

"Knock, knock" A soft voice woke him up. How many hours had passed? He stretched himself, and soon regretted it, flinched and tried to stay still. He ran his hand through his hair and rubbed his eyes as he watched a young nurse walking into the room. It had to be past noon, since she usually got there at that time and did the night shift as well. "How are you doing today?" She smiled as she prepared a few bandages on a tray; she always seemed to be cheerful and happy, and that made him feel a lot better.

"I feel great; I'm sure I'll be able to get out of here, like in less than a week…" He said cheerfully, at what she laughed and shook her head.

"I'll have to close the windows in case you try to escape" She arched one eyebrow, as she walked towards him with the tray in her hands. "Time to painful things, Mr. Braddock."

"Damian" He said. It had been only a few days she had known her, but she had always been nice to him and helped him to keep on with a better mood. And he didn't like to be called Mr. Braddock. Mr. Braddock was his father… and it sounded too weird. "And thanks for being honest" He added with a sarcastic tune in his voice.

"Well I think that after being attacked by an Ironwing this won't be that scary right?" She carefully unwrapped the bandages while he wondered why he had thought she was a muggle. Since there were no wizard hospitals in hand in that zone, he had been attended in his same workplace and then sent to an ordinary hospital that had a secret wizard section… but she had always taken care of muggle chores, so it surprised him that she actually knew about the Ironwing. "Russian dangerous beasts, indeed…"

"Yeah, well, but…" He tried to say something in his defense, expecting the same reaction his sister had had, but bit his lip as the pain had come back, because part of the skin that had been poisoned was glued to the bandages. "Fuck. Sorry."

"No, it's me who's sorry" She laughed, shaking her head again, and kept on with her job. "To be honest, this looks better than yesterday, but you're going to get a big scar… well, it's not like it would be the first right? You have to explain me how you got all these…!"

"Oh, some are pretty ridiculous" It was true. He really wouldn't want to explain he had gotten a scar on his jaw because of blowing raspberries on a baby dragon's tummy, nor lost a piece of ear playing with another little, dangerous, flying reptile. What a reputation.

"Oh, better reason to tell me about them" She added, her Russian accent being a bit more obvious in that sentence. It had been nice to see some people spoke English there.

After a few minutes of silence in which Damian had to clench his fists and bite his lip not to complain, she finished bandaging the injuries with new, clean ones, and put the rest of the bloody fabric in the trail.

"Done!" She clapped her hands, and grabbed the tray once more. "Get some rest, and don't hurry to get out of here; those wounds will take at least three weeks. My partner will come in a few hours to control the poison remains in the body, and well, you'll get the food later. We'll be around in case you need anyone."

"Sure, thanks. Goodnight."

He watched her walk towards the door and stop by it, then turn around.

"Someone has to take care of beasts right? Even monsters need love." This time, her smile had a hint of compassion in it, instead of the cheery one she had been exposing to everyone all the time. It was obvious she had been told about Adele and his argument. When he was about to answer, she had already disappeared.

He stood there, staring at the door for a few minutes, thinking of those last words. What was her name again…? He couldn't remember; Russian names were so weird… and he had no idea about reading Cyrillic, so looking at her ID card would be no use. In any case… he wondered if he had ever seen a prettier smile than that before. Probably not.


End file.
